The history of the world after the Deluge

Chapters 10, 11 give us the history of the world as peopled and
established after the deluge, and the ways of men in this new
world; the great platform of all the development of the human race
as peopling this world after the flood, and the principles and
judgments on which it is founded. Chapter 10 gives the facts,
chapter 11 how it came about in judgment, for chapters 10 and 11
are not to be taken as chronologically consequent; for the division
into nations and tongues was consequent on the attempt at unity in
human pride in Babel; and then, lastly, we have the family Jehovah
owned, to trace the descent in it to the vessel of promise:
together with God's orderings of the world. The posterity of Noah
is given by families and nations (a new thing in the earth), out of
which, from the race of Ham, arises the first power which rules by
its own force and founds an empire; for that which is according to
flesh comes first. We have then, that the moral history of the
world may be known as well as the external form it assumed, the
universal association of men to exalt themselves against God, and
make to themselves a name independently of Him *, an effort
stamped on God's part with the name of Babel (confusion), and which
ends in judgment and in the dispersion of the race, thenceforth
jealous of and hostile to one another **. Lastly we have the
genealogy of the race by which God was pleased to name Himself; for
God is Jehovah ***, the God of Shem.

* The idea of a building high enough to escape the flood is an
idea of which there is not the smallest trace in this passage. It
was the pride of man seeking a centre and a name without God, and
coalescing together. The rise of imperial power and dominion came
after this, in which individual will and energy gained the
ascendency. They are two phases of human effort without God.

** Pentecost was a beautiful testimony: God rose there above the
confusion and judgment, and found, even in its effects, the means
of getting near the heart of man; so that grace overruled judgment,
even when it was not exercised in the power which regenerates the
world.

*** All in chapter 9 is simply Elohim, God, till we get to verse
26, where it is Jehovah, the God of Shem.

The history of our
present world in its great principles, and original
sources

The importance of these chapters will be felt. The preceding
chapters gave us, after the creation, the great original principles
of man's ruin, closing with judgment, in which the old world found
its close. Here we have the history of our present world, and, as
seen in Genesis (which uncovers the roots of all that was to be for
the revelation of God's thoughts and the display of His
government), in its great principles and original sources, which
imprint their character on the results, till another judgment from
God Himself obliterates all but its responsibility, and gives room
for another and a better world.

The world set out by families

The result of this history is that the world is set out by
families. The fashion of this world has obliterated the memory and
the perception of this, but not the power. It is rooted in the
judgment of God, and, when the acquired force of this world becomes
weak, will be evermore apparent, as it now really works. The
fountain heads were three, first named in the order, Shem, and Ham,
and Japheth: the first being the family in which the covenant was
to be established on earth, and with which God was to be in
relationship; then he who was in hostility with God's family; and
last, though eldest and proudest, the Gentile Japheth.

Japheth

In the detail Japheth is given first. The isles of the Gentiles
in general, that is, the countries with which we are familiar, and
much of northern Asia, were peopled by his descendants. But the
great moral questions, and power of good and evil in the world,
arose elsewhere, and the evil now (for it was man's day) before the
good.

Ham

The East, as we call it, Palestine, down the Euphrates, Egypt,
&c., was in the hands of Ham. There power first establishes
itself by the will of one in Nimrod. A mighty hunter -- force and
craft -- works to bring untamed man, as well as beast, under his
yoke. And cities arise; but Babel was the beginning of his kingdom;
others he went out and built, or conquered. Then come the
well-known Egyptians, Mizraim. Another branch of this family is
marked as forming the races in possession of the inheritance
destined of God for His people.

Shem

Shem comes last, the father of Hebrews, the brother of him who
has long despised him, as possessed of an elder brother's title.
Such is the general result in the peopling of the world under God's
ordering.

Man seeking a centre for himself

The way was this. Man sought to make a centre for himself. Adam,
living in the earth, would have been so, and its link with God; as
Christ will be hereafter, and ever was in the purpose of God, for
Adam was the image of Him that was to come. But will has none but
itself. Noah, whose influence would have been just, has no place in
the whole history (after his worship), save that he lost the place
of authority by falling into sin, in the loss of
self-restraint*. Will characterised all now; but in a multitude of
wills, all impotent as centres, what can be done? A common centre
and interest is sought independent and exclusive of God. They were
to fill the earth; but scattered in peaceful quietness, to be of no
importance, they would not. -- They must get a name for themselves
to be a centre. And God scatters into nations by judgment what
would not fill the earth by families in peace. Tongues and nations
must be added to families, to designate men on the earth. The
judged place becomes the seat of the energetic will of one -- of
the apostate power. The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel.
Tongues were a restraint, and an iron band round men.

* This is a striking fact in the character of the history of man
after the flood. We get the full plain statement of what he
become.

God's history beginning in Shem

In Shem God's history begins. He is Jehovah, the God of Shem. We
have dates and epochs, for after all God governs, and the world
must follow: man belongs to God. Other people's ages were shortened
surely besides those here named: here we know when. And when the
earth was divided, for God after all disposed of it, men's years
lost one-half of what they were, as they had already done
immediately after the flood. But of known history God's people have
ever been the centre. This comes down to Abraham. And here again a
new element of evil had become universal, at least practically so
-- idolatry (Josh. 24: 2), though it had not been the subject
hitherto. It is man in the world; and in Shem, the secret
providential ordering of things by God. Still it ended in the power
of evil, even in the family of Shem.

Universal idolatry

We have seen the wickedness and violence of man, his rebellion
against God, and Satan's craft to bring him into this state: but
here an immense step is made, an astonishing condition of evil
appears on the scene. Satan thrusts himself, to man's mind, into
the place of power, and seizes the idea of God in man's mind,
placing himself between God and him, so that men worship demons as
God. When it began, scripture does not say; but the passage cited
shews that it had contaminated even Shem's family, in the part of
it too which scripture itself counts up as God's genealogy in the
earth at the time we have arrived at. Individuals might be pious;
but in every sense the link of the world with God was gone. They
had given themselves up, even in the family which as a race was in
relationship with God, to the worship and power of Satan. What a
tale all tells of man! What a tale of the patience of God!

A new system: Abraham called and chosen by grace

Here therefore we change entirely the whole system and order of
thought; and a principle, in exercise without doubt from the
beginning as to individual salvation, but not manifested in the
order of things, declares itself, and comes into evidence in the
history of the earth. Abraham is called, chosen, and made
personally the depositary of the promises. But remark that here, in
order that this great principle may be preserved in its own purity
as an act of God, the occasion given in the fact we have referred
to is not mentioned. We find it in Joshua 24. God comes down, after
judgment, in sovereign grace to have a family of His own by the
calling of grace -- an immense principle.

Abraham the father of the faithful, the head of the accepted
race of God on the earth

But it is well to dwell a moment on what was really a most
important epoch in the history of God's ways with the world, where
the proper history of faith begins, though of course there were
believers individually before. But as Adam was the head of the
ruined race, so Abraham was the father of the faithful, the head of
the race of God on the earth, both after the flesh and after the
Spirit. Christ the fulness of all blessing we know, in whom we have
far higher blessings than those revealed in Abraham. Still in God's
ways upon the earth Abraham was the head of the accepted
race. Idolatry, as we have seen, had at this time gained a footing
in the family of Shem himself. "Your fathers," says
Joshua (24: 2), "dwelt in old time beyond the flood, Terah,
the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor; and they served
other gods." Now these gods were demons (1 Cor. 10: 20; it is
a citation of Deut. 32: 17). That is (now that God had interfered
in judgment * and in power), these demons had possessed
themselves of this position in the spirit of man, and taken the
place in his mind of the sources of the authority displayed and of
blessing still bestowed. They presented themselves to him as
authors of those judgments, of all which drew forth the worship,
the gratitude, and the terror of the natural heart of corrupted
man, expressed in his worship according to the principles on which
he was, on which he alone could be, in relationship with those
superior beings, to whom he attributed the power to answer his
desires or to avert the things which he feared. It was not merely
man corrupted and in rebellion against God, it was his religion
itself which corrupted him; and he made of his corruption a
religion. The demons had taken the place of God in his mind, and
having the ascendency over his conscience, if man did not forget
it, hardened or misled it. He was religiously bad; and there is no
degradation like that. What a state! What folly! How long, O Lord?

* In the deluge. It does not seem that idolatry had crept in
before.

God introduces us into His own thoughts

But if the human race plunge thus into darkness, taking demons
for their god, and, incapable of self-sustainment, substitute for
their own rebellion against God servitude to what is more elevated
in rebellion, placing themselves in miserable dependence upon it,
God raises and lifts us up above all this evil, and by His calling
introduces us into His own thoughts -- thoughts far more precious
than the restoration of what was fallen. He separates a people to
hopes which suit the majesty and the love of Him who calls them,
and places them in a position of proximity to Himself, which the
blessing of the world under His government would never have given
them. He is their God. He communicates with them in a way which is
in accordance with this intimacy; and we hear speak, for the first
time, of faith (chap. 15: 6), based on these communications and
these direct testimonies of God, though it may have operated from
the beginning.